Alexandra Botez was almost six years old when she led her first army to victory on the battlefield. Her tactical blows finally broke her opponents, leaving the enemy king at the mercy of her troops.

But her father, Andrei Botez, remembers his daughter’s tentative foray into the chess world in a more mundane light.

“[Alexandra] was much too young for judo,” he said. “When she was five, my wife and I wanted her to have extracurricular activities before going to school.”

After besting her mother on the checkered war zone, Alexandra Botez found herself playing in a tournament a year after she ventured into the world of competitive playing. Even today, she revels in the constant training and satisfaction of seeing it all pay off.

“I love the feeling of seeing good results in a tournament that I’ve worked for,” said the Burnaby native. “And when you do better than you expected.”

Although she did not win her very first contest, she would clinch the top spot in the next competition she attended. Within two years — before she was 10 — she held a chess championship title and attended the World Youth Chess Championship tournament in Greece in 1999.

Now 17 and the winner of numerous tournaments, she’s competing in Surrey this week for a chance to be one of an elite group of Canadians attending the next World Youth Chess Championship in Slovenia this November.

The 2012 Canadian Youth Chess Championship, which runs from Tuesday to Friday, will choose winners from six age groups — under-eight, under-10, under-12, under-14, under-16 and under-18 — to attend the international match.

The Surrey tournament is the top youth chess competition in Canada, said Ken Jensen, president of B.C. Junior Chess.

Jensen, who organizes provincial programs and chess tournaments in B.C., sees the game as a valuable educational tool. He credits the game for helping his son, who is competing for a spot in the Slovenia event, improve both his grades and his social skills.

Studies commissioned on the educational benefits of chess by institutions like Memphis State University and groups like the New Mexico Scholastic Organization have consistently found that children who play the game have higher logic, reasoning, mathematical and reading scores.

“When kids play chess, it connects the right and left sides of the brain — like music does,” Jensen said. “There’s nothing else that connects the brain in that way. Chess makes kids smarter and the kids and their parents are figuring it out.”

He said the number of young people participating in chess has grown substantially, with Surrey an epicentre of a chess renaissance among young people in B.C.

“Surrey has more national champions in chess than any other city in the country,” he said. “We’re getting hundreds of kids to tournaments. We have over 1,000 members in B.C. Junior Chess.”

Jensen is puzzled, but gratified, that the ancient game is holding its own in a world of Facebook and instant-feedback forms of entertainment.

“They could be spending four days playing an online game and become very good at it. But at the end of four days they haven’t gained anything. ... Here [at the Canadian Youth Chess Championship] they play chess for four hours and are arguably smarter for it.”

In less than a week, Abbotsford recording artists Hedley went from touring Canada with two supporting acts and a popular new album to pariahs ensnared in allegations of sexual misconduct. On Monday, accusations that band members Jacob Hoggard, Dave Rosin, Tommy Mac and Jay Benison had engaged in sexual behaviour with teenage girls surfaced on Twitter […]

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